{"id":186688,"date":"2025-12-16T15:17:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/186688\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T15:17:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T15:17:10","slug":"bondi-shooters-extremist-links-probed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/186688\/","title":{"rendered":"Bondi shooters’ extremist links probed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Details have come to light of the radical beliefs and a possible trip to an extremist hotspot by the father and son responsible for Australia’s deadliest mass murder in three decades.<\/p>\n

Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed Akram, 24, fired toward a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing at least 15 people<\/a> and wounding dozens more.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the duo were influenced by an “extreme perversion of Islam”, but there was no evidence they were part of a larger cell. <\/p>\n

“It would appear that this was motivated by Islamic State ideology,” he told ABC radio on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A woman pays her respects after the Bondi terror attack (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Naveed came to the attention of Australia’s intelligence agency<\/a> Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) in 2019, when he was interviewed due to his association with two people, who were subsequently imprisoned.<\/p>\n

“What ASIO do is they go through and interview anyone who is connected in any way, and they go through, including family members and others,” Albanese said.<\/p>\n

“They determined that there was no evidence of this person planning or considering or indeed promoting any act of violence, or any act which could be deemed to be anti-Semitic, targeting the Jewish community, which is what occurred.<\/p>\n

“That investigation went for six months and that is a determination that they made.”<\/p>\n

When and how he was radicalised after that was under investigation, the prime minister said.<\/p>\n

An Islamic State flag is believed to have been found at the scene and the pair had reportedly travelled to the Philippines, a known hotspot for the Islamic State of East Asia, weeks before the attack.<\/p>\n

The branch is a designated terrorist organisation in Australia.<\/p>\n

Attack on Jewish community celebrating Hanukkah is the worst Australian mass killing since Port Arthur in 1996.\u00a0 (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n

Naveed is an Australian-born citizen while Sajid arrived in Australia in 1998 on a student visa before transferring to a partner visa in 2001.<\/p>\n

Sajid travelled out of Australia three times and returned on resident visas, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said.<\/p>\n

The father owned six firearms legally<\/a>, four of which were found at the scene and two were recovered from a house in Campsie, in Sydney’s southwest, which the pair used as a short-term rental ahead of the attack.<\/p>\n

Police have raided the Campsie rental and their home in Bonnyrigg. <\/p>\n

Sajid was fatally shot during the massacre at Bondi, while Naveed remains in a coma in hospital.<\/p>\n

The 24-year-old underwent an operation on Monday and is under close police guard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Details have come to light of the radical beliefs and a possible trip to an extremist hotspot by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186689,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[85,67,42,43,31451,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-186688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-australia","tag-crime-and-justice","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-terrorism","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}